Sunday, May 4, 2014
Round #4 - Margarita Goo
The recipe (fills up 50mL flask twice):
3 tbsp Gatorade G2 mix, dissolved in less than 1.5 tsp of lime juice (for electrolytes and taste)
3/4 c brown rice syrup (for maltose & glucose)
1/4 c mix of agave nectar and honey (for fructose)
12 mill grinds of sea salt (for taste, and I presume electrolytes, but a google of that just leaves me befuddled)
Taste: Tastes good! Mike says it has a little powdered-Gatorade taste, and I think it might be a tad on the salty side, so maybe next time I’ll do less of both ingredients.
Ease of Use: The consistency is perfect. No goo volcano this time! I didn’t find anything wrong with it.
Performance: I used it on the 100-mile 3 State 3 Mountain Challenge yesterday, and nothing bad happened. But I ate so many things at rest stops and drank so much Gatorade, it was a small portion of what I had total.
Round #3 - Mango Goo
Round #3 - Mango Goo
The recipe:
1 tbsp of Osmo mango, dissolved in mere drops of water (for electrolytes and taste)
1/4 c brown rice syrup (for maltose & glucose)
1 tbsp agave nectar (for fructose)
Taste:
I think I should have used the whole packet of Osmo, which I think is about 2 tbsp. You can’t really taste the mango at all. I guess it’ll have some electrolytes though.
Ease of Use:
I think this’ll be better than the explosion of lemon-lime goo. First of all, I made a smaller batch so the flask isn’t so full. Then I put as little water as possible to dissolve the Osmo and put it in the microwave to warm it up so it dissolved faster.
Performance:
I used it on a 54-mile ride including two climbs up Signal Mountain. It worked out pretty well! At least nothing bad happened. :)
The recipe:
1 tbsp of Osmo mango, dissolved in mere drops of water (for electrolytes and taste)
1/4 c brown rice syrup (for maltose & glucose)
1 tbsp agave nectar (for fructose)
Taste:
I think I should have used the whole packet of Osmo, which I think is about 2 tbsp. You can’t really taste the mango at all. I guess it’ll have some electrolytes though.
Ease of Use:
I think this’ll be better than the explosion of lemon-lime goo. First of all, I made a smaller batch so the flask isn’t so full. Then I put as little water as possible to dissolve the Osmo and put it in the microwave to warm it up so it dissolved faster.
Performance:
I used it on a 54-mile ride including two climbs up Signal Mountain. It worked out pretty well! At least nothing bad happened. :)
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Round #2 - Lemon-lime Goo
I bought some brown rice syrup from Whole Foods the other day, the primary ingredient in Clif, which is my commercial goo of choice. It was $6.99 for a 1 lb 5 oz jar. (I guess it's so thick that's it's not even considered fluid.) My original thought was to make something like the Margarita Shot Bloks, a flavor which curiously doesn't come in a goo. I thought I could reduce some margarita mix to a thick sludge and then add the other stuff to it. But I looked at the ingredients of the Jose Cuervo mix we have, and the first one is high fructose corn syrup. No thanks, Jose!
Then I realized that we have a little bit of lemon-lime Gatorade G2 mix in the cabinet. It's Chip's, as I don't really like the lemon-lime, but I was out of orange, and this keeps with the margarita theme anyway.
The recipe:
Somewhere between 1 and 2 tbsp of lemon-lime Gatorade G2 mix, dissolved in less than 2 tbsp of water (for electrolytes and taste)
3/8 c brown rice syrup (for maltose & glucose)
1/8 c agave nectar (for fructose)
2 mill grinds of sea salt (for taste, and I presume electrolytes, but a google of that just leaves me befuddled)
1/2 tsp lime juice (for tartness)
Taste:
It's possible that I could have used a little more lime juice, and maybe a touch more salt. But it's not bad.
Ease of Use:
I think it's going to be too runny, which is weird because that brown rice syrup is thick! Next time I guess I'll use a tiny bit of water to dissolve the Gatorade.
Performance:
Well....I wrote that part about the runny before I took it on a ride. There's no 'thinking' it's going to be too runny. It erupted all over me when I opened it. On my face, legs, shoulders, bike, you name it. Mostly on my legs, which was somewhat unfortunate because of the color. It looked like I had peed a very sticky pee all down my legs! So I have no idea if I would have bonked or not, because for starters, it was only a 20-mile ride so I didn't really need it anyway, but also because I would have had to have been desperate to keep trying to use it!
I'm going to try to salvage this batch by adding some more brown rice syrup, but next time I'm definitely going to dissolve the Gatorade in as little water as possible!
Then I realized that we have a little bit of lemon-lime Gatorade G2 mix in the cabinet. It's Chip's, as I don't really like the lemon-lime, but I was out of orange, and this keeps with the margarita theme anyway.
The recipe:
Somewhere between 1 and 2 tbsp of lemon-lime Gatorade G2 mix, dissolved in less than 2 tbsp of water (for electrolytes and taste)
3/8 c brown rice syrup (for maltose & glucose)
1/8 c agave nectar (for fructose)
2 mill grinds of sea salt (for taste, and I presume electrolytes, but a google of that just leaves me befuddled)
1/2 tsp lime juice (for tartness)
Taste:
It's possible that I could have used a little more lime juice, and maybe a touch more salt. But it's not bad.
Ease of Use:
I think it's going to be too runny, which is weird because that brown rice syrup is thick! Next time I guess I'll use a tiny bit of water to dissolve the Gatorade.
Performance:
Well....I wrote that part about the runny before I took it on a ride. There's no 'thinking' it's going to be too runny. It erupted all over me when I opened it. On my face, legs, shoulders, bike, you name it. Mostly on my legs, which was somewhat unfortunate because of the color. It looked like I had peed a very sticky pee all down my legs! So I have no idea if I would have bonked or not, because for starters, it was only a 20-mile ride so I didn't really need it anyway, but also because I would have had to have been desperate to keep trying to use it!
I'm going to try to salvage this batch by adding some more brown rice syrup, but next time I'm definitely going to dissolve the Gatorade in as little water as possible!
Sunday, April 6, 2014
First Homemade Goo: Tasty Motor Oil
Mike has been trying to get me to buy a gel flask for the better part of a year, so I can buy bulk energy gel (goo) and stop buying little packets. I already had a bulk box of Clif packets, so I wasn't much interested. And since Clif doesn't appear to make a jug, I still didn't really care. Until I ran out of packets and realized that I can make my own!
I bought a 5-oz Hydrapak flask on eBay for $12.99. Let the experimentation begin!
This blog is going to be my record of my successes and failures in the goo kitchen.
Round #1 - Motor Oil Goo
My first attempt was based on this blog post on Running Jackelope, because it uses blackstrap molasses, and we've had some of that sitting in a kitchen cabinet for years! I modified it a bit to what I had on hand:
I don't recall if I put any salt in it. Surely I did, since that's supposedly needed for the shit-ton of potassium in the molasses to be utilized, but I just don't remember.
Taste:
This stuff doesn't taste phenomenal, but if you need a boost on the bike, you don't usually care about taste. Unfortunately, I discovered last night that somehow my brain has associated the flavor of the goo (from the molasses, I'm sure) to the taste of my favorite beer, Chattanooga Brewing Company's Chick Bock. Let's be clear...they don't taste the same, as Chick Bock is phenomenal, and blackstrap molasses most assuredly is not. But apparently molasses is one of the flavors in Chick Bock, and I've never even realized that before. Because of that connection, I probably won't be making this recipe that often, although I would love to get rid of that unused molasses!
Ease of use:
The consistency is a wee bit thin, as it wants to ooze everywhere. But it definitely doesn't block your airways like the commercial goos can.
It looks pretty bad, like you're sucking down used motor oil. And if you get some around your mouth, it's not mostly invisible like the commercial goos. You look like a 3-year-old that got into a jar of molasses while mom wasn't looking. I had to use my helmet mirror to check my face, and then lick off what I could.
Performance:
I used it on a 30-mile, 3500 ft elevation gain ride...lots of hills. I didn't bonk, but the ride wasn't all that long either.
Grade: B-
I bought a 5-oz Hydrapak flask on eBay for $12.99. Let the experimentation begin!
This blog is going to be my record of my successes and failures in the goo kitchen.
Round #1 - Motor Oil Goo
My first attempt was based on this blog post on Running Jackelope, because it uses blackstrap molasses, and we've had some of that sitting in a kitchen cabinet for years! I modified it a bit to what I had on hand:
- 4 tbsp honey
- 2 tbsp agave nectar
- 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses
I don't recall if I put any salt in it. Surely I did, since that's supposedly needed for the shit-ton of potassium in the molasses to be utilized, but I just don't remember.
Taste:
This stuff doesn't taste phenomenal, but if you need a boost on the bike, you don't usually care about taste. Unfortunately, I discovered last night that somehow my brain has associated the flavor of the goo (from the molasses, I'm sure) to the taste of my favorite beer, Chattanooga Brewing Company's Chick Bock. Let's be clear...they don't taste the same, as Chick Bock is phenomenal, and blackstrap molasses most assuredly is not. But apparently molasses is one of the flavors in Chick Bock, and I've never even realized that before. Because of that connection, I probably won't be making this recipe that often, although I would love to get rid of that unused molasses!
Ease of use:
The consistency is a wee bit thin, as it wants to ooze everywhere. But it definitely doesn't block your airways like the commercial goos can.
It looks pretty bad, like you're sucking down used motor oil. And if you get some around your mouth, it's not mostly invisible like the commercial goos. You look like a 3-year-old that got into a jar of molasses while mom wasn't looking. I had to use my helmet mirror to check my face, and then lick off what I could.
Performance:
I used it on a 30-mile, 3500 ft elevation gain ride...lots of hills. I didn't bonk, but the ride wasn't all that long either.
Grade: B-
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